Are Harvard and Princeton hurting Afro-Am scholarship in their contest over Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West? Hmmm…I don’t really buy it. In my opinion, virtually all the academic disciplines are star-driven with regard to employment. And, while Diaspora Studies may indeed be the most interesting locus of scholarship in this field right now, Gates and West are performing an equally important function in their roles as public intellectuals…a role all too many academics have forsaken. In related news, assorted neocons have used the Summers fracas to blacklist Cornel West. Just like good little orthodoxy-craving neocons to flee at the sound of intelligent opposition, no?